NPC member Jack Williams, founding editor of the USA Today weather page, dies at 89

Devoted, long-standing National Press Club member Jack Williams died on March 21. He was 89. 

Jack was the founding editor of the USA Today weather page and wrote seven popular books on weather and related subjects, some of which were published by National Geographic. Among them were “The USA Today Weather Almanac.”

Jack began his career in journalism in his hometown of Jacksonville, Florida, where he graduated from Jacksonville University in 1962.  A year later he moved to Rochester, New York, where he worked as a reporter and copy editor at the city’s two Gannett Corp., Inc. newspapers. During the 1970s he earned his private pilot’s license, which sparked his interest in weather. He took courses in meteorology, physics and calculus at the State University of New York College at Brockport and started writing a weekly weather column.

When Gannett decided in 1981 to consider publishing a new national newspaper, USA Today, Jack was recruited to help develop the weather page. When USA Today began publishing in 1982, Jack became the founding editor of the popular and groundbreaking Weather Page. In the late 1980s, his USA Today responsibilities expanded to covering climate change and polar sciences. 

In 1997, the National Science Foundation (NSF) invited Jack to Greenland to report from a research camp on the ice sheet.  In 1999, he was among six journalists NSF took to Antarctica where Jack became a pioneer blogger for USA Today from the South Pole. Between 1999 and 2004, Jack made three more research trips to Greenland’s ice sheet, including on a research icebreaker sailing the Arctic Ocean. 

Adding to his adventurous career, Jack became a storm chaser by reporting from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration WP-3 airplanes. He took part in four scientific tornado chases on the Great Plains (without ever catching a tornado). One notable assignment was reporting on Hurricane Fran in September 1996, which took him aboard a NOAA P-3 hurricane hunter airplane. “It was a dream assignment,” Jack wrote. “Our nine-hour flight would take us into Hurricane Fran's eye several times. We'd see things few others ever see. It was a thrill to last a lifetime.”

Jack was recruited for the Explorers Club by a fellow journalist on his 2003 reporting trip to Greenland for USA Today.

Jack retired from USA Today in 2005 and worked for the American Meteorological Society in Washington, D.C., through 2008 as coordinator of public outreach. The primary part of this job was writing "The AMS Weather Book: The Ultimate Guide to America’s Weather," which AMS and the University of Chicago Press published in June 2009.

After retiring from AMS, Jack worked as a freelance writer, focusing on weather and related topics, and participated in many National Press Club events. Among them was the Photo Committee, which his wife, Darlene Shields (now deceased), led. 

A memorial service will be held April 8 at 10:30 a.m. at Murphy Funeral Home, 4510 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, Virginia. Burial is at 1:30 p.m. at Columbia Gardens Cemetery. Donations can be made in Jack’s memory to the American Meteorological Society or the National Press Foundation.